Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/paper-1/section-c/c11/solution
Past exam of the physics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2015 Paper 1 Section C C11 Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-20
Use phasors. The relation gives . The three branches form a parallel RLC circuit and share the source voltage. The source-current phasor and its real time dependence areConsequently its amplitude is and its phase relative to the voltage is . At low frequency it is inductive and lags toward ; at high frequency it is capacitive and leads toward . The ideal amplitude diverges at either extreme and has a finite minimum between them; real component losses and source electrical impedance limit those asymptotes.
Original normalized source-current amplitude, phase and resistor-to-source-current ratio for an illustrative ideal parallel RLC circuit
. Details. Zero phase requires cancellation of electrical susceptances:The inductor and capacitor currents are nonzero, equal in magnitude and opposite in phase, while the resistor supplies the in-phase source current. energy oscillates between the reactive elements; dissipation occurs in the shunt resistor. A source-current maximum would describe a different, series-resonant circuit.
The specified ratio isIt exceeds when . Define and . The two positive endpoints are , soThe endpoints have geometric mean . Increasing the parallel resistance reduces dissipative loading and narrows this band, in contrast with increasing the resistance of a series RLC circuit. Equivalently, , with and . The parallel RLC bandwidth here belongs to the explicitly defined current ratio, not a half-maximum rule applied to a source-current peak that does not exist.
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